Questioning Contingency in Social Life: Roles,Agreement and Agency

Structure/agency theories presuppose that there is a unity to structure that distinguishes it from the (potential) diversity of agents' responses. In doing so they formally divide the robust social processes shaping the social world (structure) from contingent agential variation (agency). In this article we question this division by critically evaluating its application to the concept of role in critical realism and structural functionalism. We argue that Archer, Elder‐Vass and Parsons all mistakenly understand a role to have a singular structural definition which agents may then diverge from. Drawing on the work of Gross, Mason and McEachern we argue instead that if agents diverge in their conceptions of what role incumbents should do, there is no single role definition, but rather a range of diverse role‐expectations. Acknowledging this can help us to understand variation in role behaviour, with different incumbents potentially being more exposed to some expectations than others. We argue that considering roles in this way can extend the ability of social scientists to identify robust social processes shaping role behaviour and decrease the extent to which they need to call on contingent factors in such explanations.     

Other Voices

This column is devoted to informing VGQ readers of important articles in other journals. All articles are published by the American Personnel and Guidance Association unless otherwise noted. Single copies of back issues may be ordered from APGA Publication Sales, Two Skyline Place, Suite 400, 5203 Leesburg Pike, Falls Church, Virginia 22041.     

Jumping on the Bandwagon with the Underdog: The Impact of Attitude Polls on Polling Behavior

An experimental design was used to examine the effect whichprevious polling information about candidate preference hadupon subsequent polling responses. Subjects were given one ofthree types of information (Carter commanding a lead, Reagancommanding a lead, no information about current poll results)at two different points in time. This yielded nine informationconditions. The data clearly demonstrate that both strengthof attitude and candidate preference are influenced by knowledgeof previous polling results. The patterns of both shift in attitudeand switching candidate preference are explained in terms ofan oppositional reactivity hypothesis.     

THE LAW OF DEMAND, POSITIVE SLOPING MARGINAL REVENUE, AND MULTIPLE PROFIT EQUILIBRIA

This paper demonstrates that the conditions for a positively sloping marginal revenue curve are much less stringent than is generally recognized. Simple transformations of any well-behaved convex demand function can easily result in a demand for which marginal revenue is positively sloping. For this reason, positively sloping marginal revenue functions must be considered whenever convex demand functions are analyzed. The existence of positively sloping marginal revenue makes multiple profit equilibria for the firm a very real possibility.     

Other Voices

This column is devoted to informing VGQ readers of important articles in other journals. All articles are published by the American Personnel and Guidance Association unless otherwise noted. Single copies of back issues may be ordered from A PGA Publication Sales, Two Skyline Place, Suite 400, 5203 Leesburg Pike, Falls Church, Va. 22041     

COHORT CHANGES IN POLITICAL ATTITUDES: TOLERANCE OF IDEOLOGICAL NON CONFORMITY

This analysis of cohort changes in political attitudes revealsthat tolerance of ideological nonconformity has been increasingamong all cohorts. Aging is not invariably accompanied by greaterconservatism, as earlier studies have suggested. Rather, oldercohorts are more likely than younger ones to adhere to theirearlier, more conservative, attitudes. It is this differentialpropensity for change that leads to a widening gap between cohortattitudes.     

Other Voices

This column is devoted to informing VGQ readers of important articles in other journals. All articles are published by the American Personnel and Guidance Association unless otherwise noted. Single copies of back issues may be ordered from APGA Publication Sales, Two Skyline Place, Suite 400, 5203 Leesburg Pike, Falls Church, Va. 22041     

Mirror Neurons and Practices: A Response to Lizardo

Lizardo argues that The Social Theory of Practices is refuted by the discovery of mirror neurons. The book argues that the kind of sameness of tacit mental content assumed by practice theorists such as Bourdieu is fictional, because there is no actual process by which the same mental content can be transmitted. Mirror neurons, Lizardo claims, provide such a mechanism, as they imply that bodily automatisms, which can be understood as the basis of habitus and concepts, can be shared and copied from one person to another. This response to Lizardo points out that the Gallese arguments on which Lizardo relies relate to phylogenetic and universal body movements, not to the learned movements characteristic of practices, and that there is no sameness producing mechanism parallel to the genetic one.     

BIRTHS, DEATHS, AND MARRIAGES IN THE U.S. COMMERCIAL BANKING INDUSTRY

Regulatory change not seen since the Great Depression swept the U.S. banking industry beginning in the early 1980s and culminated with the Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act of 1994. This article examines whether deregulation affected new charter (birth), failure (death), and merger (marriage) rates of U.S. commercial banks from 1978 to 2004 after controlling for bank performance and state economic activity. We find strong evidence that intrastate and interstate deregulation stimulated marriages, but not births or deaths. Finally, temporal causality tests show that mergers temporally lead to new charters and that failures lead to mergers (a demonstration effect) . ( JEL G21, L51)